In the current offseason, the rearrangement in Lokomotiv turned out to be cardinal. The club received a new president and a new head coach, and the alignment of figures was perhaps the main sensation. A month and a half passed, everyone got used to the news and ceased to relate to Lokomotiv somehow. One of the most experienced Lokomotiv footballers Sergey Gurenko was on the eve of the next, already last pre-season gathering, visiting the 2: 1 program. Alexander Shmurnov and Alexei Andronov are talking with him.
- Sergey, does it bother you that Lokomotiv has become the main newsmaker for the second year in a row before the start of the season?
- I would like stability, one that has been the key to our success for 10 years. The constancy of the team also affected the results: we successfully performed in European competitions, progressed in the championship, moved only forward, and set the highest goals.
- A new coach came to the team - Anatoly Byshovets, and Yuri Pavlovich Semin returned, however, in a new capacity - the president of the club. If it’s too early to talk about the result, then the change of headquarters could not but affect the pre-season preparation?
- Both players and fans were waiting for the return of Yuri Pavlovich. His new appointment surprised many, including me. However, he is a strong and strong-willed person, and it seems to me that in this status he will not be lost.
- Is he still the same Palych for you, or will he be someone else in the role of president of the club, will you treat him differently ?
“You know, even if he is the president of Russia, he will remain Palych for us.”
- Everything is clear with Semin, but Anatoly Byshovets is a new person for Lokomotiv, with his arrival, you can expect changes in relationships, in thinking.
- Now it is almost impossible to introduce something new into modern football. Anatoly Fedorovich - a representative of modern European football tradition. I am curious to work with him, because he is a supporter of the methodology of training football players that is not quite familiar to me. Semin always adhered to the Italian methodology, and in the future, working with other coaches, I came up with a similar approach: first the physical base is accumulated, and then the communications are developed. With Byshovets we work a lot with the ball already in the first lessons, he generally makes a serious emphasis on technology. And I myself wonder in what condition I will approach the beginning of the season.
- Football players who played in Italy always complain about a very large load at the beginning of the preparatory period. There were legends about the methods of Zdenek Zeman, who simply destroyed people in the preseason. The very base always gives fruit, this is also known, but, probably, it is more pleasant for any football player to work with the ball in the first week of training, to pay more attention to technique than endurance?
- It's all a matter of habit. When from year to year you begin to train according to one scheme, it is unusual and sometimes difficult to switch to another. But the first gathering of the season is always difficult. And the fact that the principles of Byshovets differ from the principles of other coaches does not mean that we work poorly on the eve of the season. By the way, as far as I know, all the teams of Anatoly Fedorovich always had everything in order with endurance. So I think he knows what he's doing.
- In Lokomotiv, there was a strange situation with Harry O´Connor: on the one hand, the Scot didn’t want to stay in the team, and on the other, he scored four goals in the first game at the training camp. How did the players deal with him?
- Well, in that match, many could score. It seems to me, although this is not my business, if the player does not want to play, you need to part with him. O´Connor behaved strangely not so much with individual players as, in principle, with respect to the whole team. Due to injury at the end of the season, he almost did not play, and, not waiting for the last game, he left - he did not want to support us, and then the fate of the medals was decided. It was a demonstration of our attitude towards all of us. He is a very strong football player, and it was not in vain that he was bought, but without the desire to play, it is impossible to help the club.
- Does Finn Tony Kallio, the new Lokomotiv player, have everything in order with desire?
- Time will tell. I hardly talked to him: a couple of training sessions and one joint game are very few.
- The topic is important: we are talking about a language barrier. You are familiar with the language problem both as a legionnaire who played in Italy and as our footballer playing with foreigners.
- Our foreign footballer signs a contract that stipulates the club’s responsibilities: it is necessary to provide a car, a driver, an apartment, and the football player’s duties are almost not specified. He comes to training whenever he wants, goes for treatment where he is comfortable, and not where he is told. And about the language, I generally keep quiet. O'Connor, playing for Lokomotiv almost the entire season, never said a single word in Russian. When I played in Italy, the question of the language was solved first of all, I had to learn spoken Italian for sure.
- Did you manage to master the language within the terms stipulated in the contract? And in general, how easily did you manage to overcome a certain barrier in communication, to adapt to new conditions?
- In Italy, Dmitry Alenichev helped me a lot. He talked about what traditions and orders exist in foreign clubs, including directly in Roma. I am still very grateful to him. True, if not for him, perhaps I would have learned faster and better to speak Italian. But still, if you work abroad, to have a compatriot nearby is a great thing. He will tell you a lot in relations with the club from the very first days, and you can learn everything about partners from him, and about life. When I came to Spain, Vlad Radimov helped me. I even lived with him for more than a month. In “Parma” was a Belarusian massage therapist. I was somehow lucky.
“ Maybe in the situation with O'Connor you just needed another Scot?”
- It all depends on the person. If a player came to Lokomotiv to solve his financial problems, earn money quickly and leave, the environment could hardly make him his own. And if a football player comes to us to play, he will play without much support. Here, for example, Shaker Zuagi - he is well done, he tries, learns the language, makes contact. It is evident that he has serious intentions for more than one year. There are Brazilians who learn to speak, already understand a lot. If you go back a little: the Nigerian James Obiora never learned a single Russian word in four years, and the South African Jacob Lekheto spoke easily and, in my opinion, did much more for Lokomotiv.
- At CSKA, neither Wagner Love nor Daniel Carvalho speak Russian, but they did a lot for the club.
- So they play mainly among themselves, and even in attack. They speak the language of the pass, and defense players must communicate, prompt each other. Defense must be speaking. The problems that arose at the beginning of last season at Lokomotiv were related to the language barrier. The failure of goalkeeper Eldin Yakupovich at the start is primarily due to the fact that he could not properly tell the defenders. The same can be said of the defenders. Now both Emir Spahich and Branislav Ivanovich speak decently in Russian, and at that moment there was a whole Babylon: Russians, Serbs plus Amougu Bikey, who does not understand anything at all.
- What did you learn from Fabio Capello, who played in Italy?
- There are many different trainers and methods. But, as a rule, the coach wins, who not only understands the game, but can also be a good psychologist. And, most importantly, the coach must be a strong personality. He must not only understand what his players are capable of, but also know how to get his maximum out of a player and make him progress. Fabio Capello has won a lot in his career. He possesses all these qualities. This is the science that I learned while working with him.
- You said the player must constantly progress. Are you doing this?
- At least I am progressing in a tactical sense. I'm playing as a defensive midfielder - the position is unusual for me, but only in Lokomotiv. Arrigo Sacchi used me precisely in this position, we played in the Parma three central midfielders, then in the Spanish Cup final I, again, played as an extreme midfielder. I am grateful to Slavoljub Muslin for insisting on my transfer to the middle of the field. Many did not believe in me then, but the coach was adamant, and I began to play.
- What happened in the team when Muslin left and was replaced by Oleg Dolmatov?
- For us it was a shock. We went in second place, beat CSKA, we had every chance to gain a foothold in the leaders. And suddenly - a change of coach. The team was cut alive. Yes, we did not pass the Zulte-Waregem in the UEFA Cup, but this proves once again that the club did not carry out the best selection work. Then we simply did not have enough strength and reserves. Recall, by the way, how at the end of the championship in a match with Amkar we had to let players out of the double. The situation is abnormal when there are no 18 equal players with such a budget. This is a problem for both the club and the players themselves.
- Do not you think that Lokomotiv simply gave CSKA and Spartak their medals and a ticket to the Champions League?
- You asked me about the resignation of Muslin. She was most welcomed by Valery Gazzayev and Vladimir Fedotov.
- What is happening with the national team of Belarus now? The generation is obviously strong (Alexander Gleb is a European football star), but the results prove the opposite .
- We want to achieve a result today, right away. A coach comes and declares: our team will go to the European Championship, to the World Championship. But how do we go, due to what? In order to leave the group in order to get ahead, say, Italy, we need to be three heads taller, because neither the fans nor the judges will help us. Rather, the opposite. Let us honestly tell ourselves that while this is a utopia, we will move gradually. We can beat the Italians, but it will be a miracle. The team will give results, only becoming a stable team. At one time, in 1995, we beat the Dutch, but it was only a surge.
- Thanks to this surge in football, the boys came, the country began to build stadiums, right?
- Indeed, recently in Belarus, stadiums have been built and reconstructed in almost every regional center. Compared with Russia, it seems to me that more is being built. But it's not only that.
- Why don't the players want to go to the national team of Belarus?
- No motivation, no full commitment. And all this can appear only when relations between players and the federation improve. Sometimes it seems that nobody thinks about the players there. Imagine that we are returning from an away game, the match is over, we are taken to the airport at three in the morning, left without the opportunity to rest, eat, and so on. Of course, after such stories a lot of dissatisfied people appear.
- Is your return to the national team of Belarus possible?
- In the situation that is developing there today, I just do not see the point. Now the federation is going to rejuvenate the national team, but the problems are far from the age of the players. Then, you can endlessly rejuvenate the team and lose several generations at once.
Alexander SHMURNOV, Alexey ANDRONOV